The day begins with the full release of OBL’s new video, shown on Al Jazeera TV but not on US TV, amidst new wrinkles in the war to find him and demolish his organization. Once again, the elusive one step ahead of the Pentagon OBL has seized the media high ground, forcing the public to acknowledge his omnipresent existence. While Donald Rumsfeld and other Americans try to ignore him, his latest video is another agit prop big finger sticking it to the US, or perhaps a wagging tongue is a more appropriate image in this cat and mouse game of “Now I kill you — No You don’t.”

SOLDIERS FOR HIRE:US “ALLIES” WILL NOW GO “CAVE BY CAVE”

The US military is now backtracking on its plan to send our troops into the caves, perhaps they now know that Bin-Laden is long gone, perhaps because they know it is still dangerous to “smoke them out” which is what the Commander in Chief first envisaged them doing. Now, they will be buying help from the so-called Eastern Alliance who are “motivated” by offers of weapons and money. They will now do what heavy lifting remains.

THE NEW VIDEO

Bin Laden gushes in the new video about the blows struck against the Empire. But the tenacity of the US military effort has clearly left physical marks on his evil self in terms of a whiter beard whiter and a gaunter face. He looks like shit, but is now willing to openly credit his Al Qaederites units with brilliant tactics by striking at the “core of the economy and military in the US. He says “They used the enemy’s planes and studied at enemy schools, without the need for training camps. But God helped them and taught this cruel lesson to those arrogant people who see freedom only for the white race and keep other nations humiliated and oppressed.” He is now making racial appeals after referring to blacks as “slaves” in the candid camera sting like tape that was not supposed to have run.Osama watcher Peter Bergen, CNN’s resident “terrorist expert” (ie, he wrote a book) did not comment on this new appeal to racialism, but, on the economic issues,he says OBL is right, acknowledging that that damage has been in the hundreds of billions.

The experts are now saying they think Mr. Evil is in Pakistan after having paid off one of those Afghan military commanders who has been working for us. (You can’t buy those guys, only lease them by the day.) CNN cites top Afghan intelligence sources who now reveal that they think he bribed his way out of Tora Bora, and, coincidence or not, US Special operations are also now pulling out of the area. (In other parts of that country tribal leaders continue to clash with each other imperiling food shipments to the starving) The big question is: will the Pakistani military be able to allocate needed resources to go after him, now that it has a bigger threat on its hand, with the Indian military mobilizing on its borders.

CONFRONTATION ESCALATES BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN

In yesterday’s column, I complained about the lack of coverage of this building confrontation in two states with nuclear weapons. The two sides are not taking despite Colin Powell’s efforts by telephone to persuade them to start talks. India rejected that request. At issue, of course, is the Indian insistence that it has the right to go after terrorists that it believes are harbored by Pakistan. The Pakistanis say that freelance Islamic terrorists who are against the Islamabad government attacked India’s Parliament precisely to get the two states fighting.

Like the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, it seems to have achieved its goal. CNN reports this morning that the US is sharing Indian “intelligence” with Pakistan on the incident and the groups suspected of being behind it. Meanwhile where is the coverage on the background to this crisis, to the tortured history of Kashmir, and reporting on the history of Indian human rights abuses and arrogance there, and Pakistani covert support for the forces they see as freedom fighters but Indians brand terrorists. Abuses have occurred on both sides of the “line of control” for years, and the danger now, is that the situation is rapidly flying out of control.

Nightline did a fine job of showing how serious the situation is despite attempts in Washington and on the front page of the NY Times to downplay its seriousness. There have been 3 wars between Pakistan and India in the last 54years and in both countries the media is building up the war fever. I saw no reports from the UN or any neutral agencies who might try to mediate. The there are two sides to every story nentality is in place once again and third parties and peace forces are there but not being interviewed in the world media….at least not yet. What’s scary is that the Al Qauda which doesn’t seem to have the capacity to deal a new blow against the US, may have the desire and ability to stir up this hornet’s nest as they did in Somalia by helping to polarize that conflict against the US.

SAUDI ARABIA’S OTHER ARMY SURFACES

One reason for this, explained in a long Times investigation of Saudi policy by Douglas Jehl is that the Saudi government encouraged young people to join the Jihad, or at least allowed them to do it in a society that controls its citizens tightly. He revealed that as many as 25,000 Saudis received military training abroad since l979. That’s TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND, a small army under any circumstances, and one which the Saudi Authorities did nothing about. The rulers looked a way in hopes that the more young men turned to Islamic fundamentalism, the less pressure they would be putting on the Kingdom to modernize or democratize.

The Times story faults the Saudis for a “miscalculation of global proportions” but lets the US off the hook. Where was the CIA when this was going on? Where was the US military? In l992, our company Globalvision did a FRONTLINE report on the arming of Saudia Arabia to the tune of billions in oil for weapons schemes to keep this repressive theocracy in power. This recent history seems to have given way to calculated amnesia.

CUBA QUE LINDA ES CUBA

And now we learn that many of some 62 Al Qaeda/Taliban detainees in Afghanistan may soon be on their way to the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where a new prison is under constuction. This choice is hardly an outpost of freedom that can be exploited in the propaganda side of the Terror war because, to much of the world, it is a symbol of US bullying against Cuba that goes back to the Spanish American War. (Remember that conflict which began with the “sinking” of the Maine by suspected terrorists of the day. 50 years later, it emerged that the ship only sunk after an engine room accident, not a sneak attack.) The US in effect seized the territory imposing its own lease under most favorable terms despite Cuban demands that its territory be returned. The base was last used to detain Haitian refugees fleeing that country’s last dictatorship. It was finally closed after charges of abuse by guards of the Haitians surfaced. Globalvision’s now defunct human rights TV series RIGHTS & WRONGS carried a report on the degradations of the place. This is not a good omen, but I have yet to see this concern mentioned anywhere.

NEWS NOT IN THE NEWS

From time to time I get to see DW TV from Germany to discover not only news from Europe not in the news in America but news from elswhere in the world that is simply not visible on American TV — huge floods and mud slides in Brazil and followups from Brazil. The highest unemployment statistics in recent times came out today in the US (5.3%) and in Japan (5.5%) but it seemed to me that this was news left for CNN’s crawl, not its screen. There was also a report of more than 500 collapses of dot coms in the year gone by followed by a story that should have been more clearly linked: news that the Investment Bank of Paine, Webber (located across the street from my office) is fining its brokers by 200% for unethically pumping up the IPO craze. Shouldn’t this be something the government investigates and the media follows in the nonexistent corporate crime news?

Here’s an item in the corporate crime department from CNN.com that demands more investigative enterprise, surfacing in the immediate aftermath of many stories linking ENRON to the Bush Administraion. What do you make of it:

ENRON DONATES TO DEMOCRATS JUST BEFORE BANKRUPTCY

A week before filing for bankruptcyprotection, energy giant Enron Corp. donated$100,000 to theDemocratic Party committee that helps Senate candidates,campaign finance reports show.

REMEMBERING FLORIDA

An excellent New Yorker piece by Hedrik Hertzberg on the media role in the Florida recount is now online. www.newyorker.com :7 ” Is it O.K. to talk about the recount yet? It wasn’t the right time on September 10th, because the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center had only just finished organizing the data gleaned from its meticulous examination of a hundred and seventy-five thousand uncounted Florida ballots. It wasn’t on September 12th, because the news organizations that had commissioned the study were otherwise occupied. It was the right time on November 12th, apparently: that was the day the news organizations got around to publishing their analyses of the results. But, judging from the lack of discussion that has ensued. What the the hell. Let’s talk about it anyway. The first thing to say about the media recount (its formal name was the Florida Ballots Project) is that it was a praiseworthy endeavor — well designed, unbiased, thorough, and public spirited. The consortium of news organizations — its eight members were the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Tribune Company, the Palm Beach Post, the St. Petersburg Times, CNN, and the Associated Press — did something admirable. The second thing to say is that the courage that spurred the consortium into existence, a year ago, flagged at the end. ” Did it ever. Another must read piece by Robert Parry appears on Consortium News www.consortiumnews.com :

“Major national news outlets have gone silent in the face of evidence that theypublished misleading stories about the Florida presidential recount. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the Washington Post and other leading newsorganizations relied on a dubious hypothesis to craft stories last month portraying George W. Bushas the recount winner, when the recount actually showed that Al Gore won if all legally cast voteswere counted…” Read the rest.

IN THE MAIL BOX:

M.G.G. Pillai writes from Malasia challenging Time Magazine’s decision to feature Rudy Giuliani and not Bin Laden on its renamed MAN OF THE YEAR cover:”By pandering to the US government’s fright at what Mr Evilcreated, TIME lost its objectivity and way. Like every newspaperand magazine in the Anglo-Saxon world known for that — before 30September unveiled their nakedness. As indeed every institutionof note. In contrast, look at the newspapers in the EuropeanUnion: all, like their governments, retained, if not enhanced,their independence, fairplay and objectivity. When newspapersbecome mouthpieces of governments where they matter, they ceaseto be what it proclaims. If the decision had been taken in theway it selected its past Men of the Year, there would be noquibble. It was not. TIME is no more what it was; and rivenwith conflicts between the needs of journalism and the profitsits conglomerate owners demand. When that conglomerate ownersare as jingoistic as the US government, journalism loses.Thanks to Mr Osama bin Laden, nor Mr Rudolph Guiliani.”

MIDDLE EAST NEWS NOW AVAILABLE IN THE USA

Judging by some of the TV reports from the Middle East that I have seen in a new MOSAIC series broadcast by the World Links TV channel (available on two satellite channels) shows lots of hostility to the US but not a lot of love for Bin Laden. If you have access to this new Channel, check it out.

At week’s end, I bid adiu from “my vacation resort” (ie, my living room) in the People’s Republic of Chelsea in downtown Manhattan, not far from the intersection in which an accident claimed six holiday shoppers yesterday. I am still on line awaiting your thoughts as the year wears down. Write: dissector@mediachannel.org